Postural Control Complexity and Fatigue in Minimally Affected Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis

This study investigated changes in postural control complexity in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) before and after a fatigue protocol. Thirteen minimally affected PwMS (1.53 ± 1.03- Expanded Disability Status Scale) and 12 non-MS controls. Postural test included quiet stance on a force platform under two visual conditions (saccades and fixation) before and after a fatigue protocol. Postural complexity was assessed through the multiscale entropy. A three-way ANOVA showed a main effect of fatigue in the medial-lateral direction (p <0.007), with fatigue protocol reducing postural complexity in both groups. No differences were found between groups or visual conditions. Minimally affected PwMS demonstrated similar postural complexity compared with non-MS controls under both visual tasks and showed similar decrements in postural complexity as a result of fatigue.     

The impact of COVID-19 concerns on perceiving others' faces

Unlike most infectious diseases, COVID-19 is characterised by an absence of facial disease-signalling cues. Yet, it is still unclear whether it has influenced face perception. Understanding this may help clarify if and how our motivation toward social interactions is conditional on situational pathogen threats. The present study investigated if priming disease concerns about COVID-19 would change people's perception of neutral faces on perceived disease, social discomfort and arousal elicited by such faces; this condition was compared with other infectious/non-infectious diseases and a non-disease priming condition. One-hundred sixty-six participants recruited nationally performed the online task. When compared with the non-disease condition, participants primed for COVID-19 perceived faces as sicker and tended to view them as eliciting more social discomfort; no difference occurred in arousal. No other difference was found between conditions. These findings suggest that the pandemic context can shape how we perceive others' apparent sickness. Overall, these might reflect adaptations intertwined with the behavioural immune system's defence mechanisms.     

Toward a diversity hypothesis: Multidimensional effects of intergroup contact

The long-standing and important contributions of the contact hypothesis in reducing prejudice in intergroup situations is augmented by the introduction of the diversity hypothesis. The diversity hypothesis argues that the positive consequences of diversity will occur when the following four conditions are met: (a) full participation occurs across all levels of society for membres of diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural groups; (b) the degree of participation approximates an appropriate index of representation for racial and ethnic groups; (c) common purpose across these levels of diversity is created; and (d) cultural identity is valued. The empirical evidence for these conditions and implications for the organizational advantages of diversity are discussed.     

Do assortative preferences contribute to assortative mating for adiposity?

Assortative mating for adiposity, whereby levels of adiposity in romantic partners tend to be positively correlated, has implications for population health due to the combined effects of partners' levels of adiposity on fertility and/or offspring health. Although assortative preferences for cues of adiposity, whereby leaner people are inherently more attracted to leaner individuals, have been proposed as a factor in assortative mating for adiposity, there have been no direct tests of this issue. Because of this, and because of recent work suggesting that facial cues of adiposity convey information about others' health that may be particularly important for mate preferences, we tested the contribution of assortative preferences for facial cues of adiposity to assortative mating for adiposity (assessed from body mass index, BMI) in a sample of romantic couples. Romantic partners' BMIs were positively correlated and this correlation was not due to the effects of age or relationship duration. However, although men and women with leaner partners showed stronger preferences for cues of low levels of adiposity, controlling for these preferences did not weaken the correlation between partners' BMIs. Indeed, own BMI and preferences were uncorrelated. These results suggest that assortative preferences for facial cues of adiposity contribute little (if at all) to assortative mating for adiposity.     

Family and Systems Therapy and Training in Portugal

The history of systemic family therapy in Portugal since its appearance until the present is discussed. Some data on systemic family therapists’ training is provided in the context of the Portuguese Society of Family Therapy and Academic Institutions. In Portugal, family therapy has been extended to various contexts, including medical and community services. Finally, future directions for family and systems therapy practice and training in Portugal are provided emphasizing the importance of family interventions as an important resource to empower families living with health chronic conditions. The Portuguese Family Therapy Society, every 2 years, organizes a scientific Iberian conference with Portuguese and Spanish speakers. This allows the exchange of clinical experience and research about family and systems theory.     

Eating Disorders: A Bond between Medicine,Culture and Psychoanalysis

Action in connection with the therapeutic process is often equated with acting out. The subtle behaviour that belongs to ?the complicated system of transmitting and receiving unconscious signals? (Sandler), with which the patient attempts to make the analyst behave as the object of transference or to fulfill an unconscious desire, is also described as acting out or micro-acting out (Treurniet). This fine-grained action, however, means nothing; it is not symbolic or communicative action. Its intention is, rather, to trigger effects and induce interactions. It occurs not only on the side of the analysand but also on that of the analyst, and is part of the unconscious communication in the therapeutic process. Presented here are some of the various interactive ways and means with which the analyst is prompted into unconscious action and certain, unnoticed, ways in that he turn ?treats? the patient. The analyst's action responses can bear the character of interpretations with which he may unintentionally reveal how he regards the behaviour of the patient.     

Acquired Procedural Dyscalculia Associated to a Left Parietal Lesion in a Child

We report the case of an 11-year-old boy who developed an anarithmetia in association with a left temporo-parietal tumor. His oral and written language were normal as well as his ability to judge magnitudes, process numbers, read operation signs and retrieve number facts. He had a specific difficulty in performing the procedures of subtraction, especially when it involved borrowing. These skills had been mastered before the present illness. This case shows that the components of calculation can be dissociated by brain lesions sustained during childhood, while arithmetic abilities are being acquired, thus reinforcing findings from developmental dyscalculias, that suggest a modular organisation of those skills during development.     

Eye movements when reading: The importance of the word to the left of fixation

In reading, it is well established that word processing can begin in the parafovea while the eyes are fixating the previous word. However, much less is known about the processing of information to the left of fixation. In two experiments, this issue was explored by combining a gaze-contingent display procedure preventing parafoveal preview and a letter detection task. All words were displayed as a series of xs until the reader fixated them, thereby preventing forward parafoveal processing, yet enabling backward parafoveal or postview processing. Results from both experiments revealed that readers were able to detect a target letter embedded in a word that was skipped. In those cases, the letter could only have been identified in postview (to the left of fixation), and detection rate decreased as the distance between the target letter and the eyes' landing position increased. Most importantly, for those skipped words, the typical missing-letter effect was observed with more omissions for target letters embedded in function than in content words. This can be taken as evidence that readers can extract basic prelexical information, such as the presence of a letter, in the parafoveal area to the left of fixation. Implications of these results are discussed in relation to models of eye movement control in reading and also in relation to models of the missing-letter effect.     

Reversal of object-based benefits in visual attention

In divided-attention tasks, observers must make speeded (or near threshold accuracy) judgements concerning two target features in a display. Typically, when the two features belong to the same object they are more rapidly judged than when they belong to separate objects, a pattern of findings referred to here as a “same-object benefit”. However, we note here that many of these studies share common features, in particular the use of pre-exposed, outline, and/or overlapping objects, and their findings may not generalize to other types of display. Building substantially on previous work by Davis, Welch, Holmes, and Shepherd (2001), we show in four new studies that once these features are not present in a divided-attention task, no same-object benefits are reported. Rather we now find “same-object costs”, where features belonging to a single object are less rapidly judged than features belonging to separate objects.